Protest and Survive: a Brief History and Analysis of the Politics of Punk
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PROTEST AND SURVIVE: A BRIEF HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICS OF PUNK A THESIS IN Musicology Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF MUSIC by DILLON PATRICK HENRY B.F.A., Carnegie Mellon University, 2010 M.M., University of Michigan, 2014 Kansas City, Missouri 2018 © 2018 DILLON PATRICK HENRY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PROTEST AND SURVIVE: A BRIEF HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICS OF PUNK Dillon Patrick Henry, Candidate for the Master of Music Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2018 ABSTRACT Politics are an important aspect of most punk music, and many authors, avoiding concrete description, paint the genre with a nebulous left-ish brush. This, however, is insufficient at explaining how and why the genre has adapted to (as well as helped shape) geographically and culturally disparate communities across the globe over the last half- century. Moreover, most academic treatment of punk rock comes from a cultural and sociological perspective, lacking a theoretical and analytical discussion of the music itself. This document will synthesize the evolving genre’s musical and cultural entanglements with politics. To this end, the document will focus on landmark bands, albums, and locations around the world in a mostly chronological order with occasional overlap, documenting cultural development of the genre with supplemental musical analysis. With rigorous primary-source analysis of punk rock zines, this document will also recognize punk rock communities and transmission of ideas outside of the bands themselves. The elusive intertwining and occasionally paradoxical stances of the punk subculture are precisely why creating a single definition of punk rock is a difficult endeavor. Thus, it is important to recognize and enumerate these areas of conflict to better understand the music and the communities it serves. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my family: I am forever indebted to your continued, unwavering support. To all of my former band mates, without whom I would have never discovered the majority of this music, nor appreciated it so intensely. To Stuart Hinds, for your wisdom, guidance, and (occasional) chop-busting. Last, and most importantly, to Dr. Tyrrell, who not only allowed but encouraged my research pursuits, and without whom this never would have been written (particularly because of the continued cattle-prodding I needed through the duration of this project). iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 Historical Background.................................................................................................1 Review of Literature ...................................................................................................4 2. POST-PISTOLS PUNK IN THE U.K., 1977-1985..................................................... 12 3. EARLY U.S. HARDCORE....................................................................................... 29 4. GROWTH AND CHANGE, 1985-2000 .................................................................... 46 5. PUNK POST-2000 ................................................................................................... 60 6. ZINES ...................................................................................................................... 71 7. PUNK IN MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES ........................................................ 82 Punk and Race .......................................................................................................... 82 Punk and Gender....................................................................................................... 85 Punk and Sexuality ................................................................................................... 88 Punk Around the World ............................................................................................ 90 8. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 95 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 106 VITA ............................................................................................................................. 110 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Historical Background Punk rock’s initial burst into the public eye was violent but brief, coinciding with the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols, from roughly 1976-1978. Cultural changes and the musical artists that shaped and catalyzed the punk movement, however, had much earlier begun bubbling under mainstream society’s surface. The Velvet Underground, formed in New York City in 1965, is cited, along with the Stooges (formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967) and the New York Dolls (formed in New York City in 1971) as cornerstones of what has retroactively been dubbed “proto-punk.”1 These groups are less alike in sound than they are in attitude, in their conscious subversion of polished, formulaic pop and rock, and in how they embraced marginalized music and culture. La Monte Young was a primary influence on the Velvet Underground, for instance, and the New York Dolls stirred up controversy by performing frequently in drag. Iggy Pop, front man of the Stooges, was known for writhing violently on stage, bare torso exposed, not infrequently under the influence of hard drugs.2 The idea of conscious and at times aggressive subversion of musical and cultural norms would become indispensable to the subsequent decades of punk musicians. 1 For a recent primer on the subject, see Daniel Kane, “Do You Have a Band?”: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). 2 This is chronicled extensively in Paul Trynka, Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed (New York: Broadway Books, 2007). 1 As punk musicians would come to react to their own cultural surroundings, so these proto-punk groups did before them. Musicologist Richard Witts frames the Velvet Underground’s emergence in its cultural context: the Lower East Side, where the group coalesced, had seen manufacturing jobs leave in droves. Cockroach-infested apartments were dark, dank, and crumbling from lack of upkeep. Immigrant populations with limited finances moved in, only to be displaced later by gentrification.3 The post-World War II generation in New York saw little of the liberty, equality, and opportunity that America was supposed to represent. Similar circumstances across the Atlantic were a catalyst for a young Joe Strummer, squatting in abandoned houses in neglected, lower-class neighborhoods, to found the Clash.4 Born from these proto-punk economic woes, disillusion with the false promises of a post-WWII era, and the countercultural attitudes of the 1960s, punk rock was ripe to develop in disparate hotbeds across the U.S. and the U.K. Its ideals, both musical – with quick tempos, harsh vocals, and general abrasiveness – and philosophical – anti-authoritarian, anti- oppression, and a Do-It-Yourself (henceforth “DIY”) attitude – has had a lasting presence in society, occasionally mainstream and always lurking somewhere beneath the surface. The genre warrants continued examination to untangle its place in the popular music canon as well as its complex relationships with sociocultural movements and politics, local and worldwide. 3 Richard Witts, The Velvet Underground (London: Equinox Publishing, Ltd., 2006), 2-6. 4 Chris Salewicz’s Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer (London: Faber and Faber, 2007) is a thorough and engaging biography that goes into great detail about Strummer’s miserable state of existence while creating and struggling to break through with the Clash. 2 When issues in equality, justice, and hegemonic cultural standards are explored and prodded, as they are so frequently in punk music, politics are inexorably linked. Political expression in punk rock, as with other art forms and modes of expression, is not always overt, espousing or opposing a specific political party, candidate, or ideology. This expression certainly can be, 5 but more often it is not. It is in the differences in manner and content of expression that a world of subtlety and nuance in the political nature of punk rock is constructed. Moreover, these differences are what stir heated debate among listeners, performers, and scholars alike on what is and is not “true” punk rock.6 To understand this debate, and to adequately assess the far-reaching punk subculture, one must recognize and embrace the genre’s wildly different, at times contradictory, views, which result from its separate communities with a lack of any central authority (which should come as no surprise, given the ideological punk struggle against authority in myriad forms). The widespread umbrella notion of punk espousing vaguely left politics is woefully simplistic and incomplete. While this could ring true for a number of artists, the assumption still runs into a host of problems with bands who embrace other elements crucial to the genre (screamed vocals, abrasive distortion, and quick tempos) but have staunchly different political or apolitical values. There are, for example, avowedly apolitical street